Dr Tijmen Euser

Biography

Before coming to Cambridge, I was a postdoctoral fellow/group leader in the Photonic Crystal Fibre Science division of Prof. Philip Russell at the Max-Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany. Before that, I did my PhD research on “Ultrafast optical switching of photonic crystals”, supervised by Prof. Willem Vos at the University of Twente and the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF) in the Netherlands.

Research

I am interested in nanoscale light-matter interactions, including optical-, thermal-, and fluidic forces. Our Optofluidics laboratory in the Maxwell Centre develops novel optical techniques, based on optofluidic waveguides and spatial light modulators, to study such interactions in a highly-controlled way. We have, for example, optically propelled micro- and nanoparticles in hollow-core photonic crystal fibre and used them as microscale probes that measure thermally driven flow or electric fields. Current efforts focus on optical and opto-thermal  manipulation and detection of biomolecules and nanoparticles.

Our methods also enable photochemical and catalytic reactions on sample volumes that are five orders of magnitude smaller than in conventional methods. The well-defined waveguide modes allow monitoring such reactions by in-situ absorption and Raman spectroscopy. These fundamental studies are expected to have a strong impact on the development of new photocatalytic systems for solar fuel generation, the understanding of battery chemistry, and on flow chemistry in general.

Our research is highly interdisciplinary and makes full use of existing expertise in nanoparticle spectroscopy, catalysis, microscopy, and microfluidics, both at the Cavendish and across the School of Physical Sciences.